Monk Punk and Shadow of the Unknown Omnibus

by Aaron French

  Thomas turned from milky white to a light shade of red. “My girlfriend. She’s really in to this kind of work. She needs help with her research and I don’t really mind. It’s very interesting. I thought I wouldn’t like it, but it’s good. Besides, she needs me.”

  I was intrigued. “Needs you?”

  He nodded as he sat down and put the black book upon the table. “She’s blind. An accident when she was a child, so she has memories of sight, but she’s blind now. They don’t make these,” he tapped the book, “in brail.”

  I was still perplexed. “How did she even begin to study this stuff, then? It’s all very old, and indeed they don’t make these things in brail.”

  “Her mother,” Thomas replied. “She’s dead now. But she was into this kind of study and would read to Helspeth.”

  I smirked. “Helspeth?” The name was decidedly unusual, reminding me of a moniker, and not a good one at that. Was she one of the pseudo-mages who feigned at learning sorcery through study and gave themselves a dramatic title?

  Thomas grinned. “Yeah, Helspeth. She hates it. She likes to be called Beth. Her mother was into this, I told you, and she must have thought a name like Helspeth was fitting.”

  I for one would not pluck a name from occult literature and give it to my child. But then again I was unmarried and in fact had never encountered a woman who had shown an interest in bizarre historical research. As far as I knew, the field of study was dominated by two classes of people. Young adventurous men (be they scholarly or not), like myself and Thomas, and old miserly men with massive libraries who shared their books with virtually no one. I longed to one day be like those old men, sitting spider-like in my web of ancient literature.

  “Beth, is it? She doesn’t come here to research with you?”

  Thomas leaned in and gave a conspiratorial glance to the nearby empty aisles. “She’s not welcome here. It isn’t Beth’s fault, mind you. It’s her mother’s. She was kinda weird and made a scene before. She was banned from the campus and Beth thinks they’d do the same to her if they found out who she’s related to.”

  I had been banned myself from three universities and one public library, so I was entirely sympathetic. “I understand.” I offered a small smile. “Let’s research then. Maybe I can meet Beth later?”

  Thomas agreed, but I saw him frown slightly at my mention of meeting Beth. He was new to the study of ancient things, but already the paranoia was setting in. Good for him. However, I sensed he was jealous over female flesh rather than moldy parchments. He’d learn eventually.

  ***

  Our studies proved incredibly fruitful. Thomas was a self-admitted amateur in the field, knowing only what he had gleaned from the other two works and from his basic tutelage under Beth. We all have to start somewhere, and so I was patient and forgiving when I had to explain various references, or point out the importance of certain esoteric imagery.

  Though the library officially closed at five, we managed to stay until six, and were then forcibly escorted out by security. I admit to a small pleasure every time that happens.

  We stood outside the darkened library; the sun had set and only a few lights from the parking lot gave any illumination. The sun was down, but even by night Arizona summers are dreadfully hot. I sweated and pulled my coat over myself.

  I caught Thomas staring at me, but he didn’t ask the question I thought he would. This suited me, as I didn’t want to have to lie.

  “I’ll take all the notes you have back to Beth. Thanks. Tomorrow I’ll be here at noon. Do you have the time?” He blinked. “I mean, are you a student here? Will classes get in the way?”

  I shook my head. “I do not attend Sun West, but I am free tomorrow. Noon it is. I think a few more days of study and we’ll get what we can out of this place.”

  I was, in fact, a student without a college; I’d been kicked out of a prestigious Ivy League institution that had a tremendous love of liberal arts, but no appreciation at all for the seekers of truth. Especially when, in a fit of anger, one of their shining pupils threatened to burn down the school if they didn’t open their literary vaults. But that was four years ago. I found myself of a much calmer disposition without the needless toil of traditional academia.

  I shook Thomas’s hand and left to continue my nocturnal research.

  ***

  I was late for our appointment, but quite on purpose. Being on time makes one think you are reliable, and I am not reliable. At a moment’s notice I may have had to flee Phoenix for a cooler city, and possibly one in another state, or even country. My nighttime activities on occasion involved breaking and entering, and I had desecrated more than one grave in search of precious information buried with old men who, even in death, were jealously guarding some scroll they had unearthed. Until, that is, I unearthed them.

  It would be better if Thomas did not grow to rely on me... or know too much about me, either.

  But there he stood, nervously pacing in front of the library, which was a hideous concrete monstrosity with tall, gothic windows blended, without much thought, into a very modern form of architecture, and painted a boring shade of tan. I much preferred it by night when I could not make it out.

  Upon seeing me, Thomas’s eyes lit up and he approached. “You’re late.”

  “I am.” I had no intention of apologizing. “Shall we—”

  “Beth wants to see you,” he blurted. Thomas’s features tensed, his eyes narrowed and he sniffed. “She was excited to find out there was someone else who knew as much as she does.” He reached a hand out and gripped my arm. “I really like her.”

  I laughed lightly. “I know you do. I have no interest in stealing your girlfriend.” Perhaps something she knew, but not her. “And besides,” I said. “I don’t much like girls.” I gave my best rendition of a shy smile.

  Thomas released me and stepped back. “Oh, I see.”

  Actually, he didn’t. I didn’t much like boys either.

  Living in Phoenix meant that any form of public transportation was out of the question, unless one wanted to wait for hours. I had a car; so did Thomas. We decided I should follow him to Beth’s house, which was located outside the city in a rural town.

  Traffic was dreadful, the roads were under construction and festooned with orange banners and barriers, the traffic lights didn’t change often enough and the highway leading out of the city had two lanes when it needed six.

  Eventually the sprawling blight of white buildings and Mexican-tiled roofs gave way to bleak scrubland and distant, gray mountains that looked bare and lifeless. The temperature was well past one hundred degrees and I passed more than one pile of cattle bones. There was also a fair amount of roadside shrines built by the local Catholic community which marked the deaths of loved ones with little white crosses and flowers. I was amazed that even far from civilization, the shrines remained tended to.

  A dirt exit road spiraled past a set of shrines and meandered into the desert scrub. As I followed Thomas’s car, I could see small trailers scattered about. The place was secluded; the trailers were rundown and weatherbeaten, while there were no signs of any store or even a gas station. The idea of a fellow scholar living in such squalor wasn’t surprising; I had myself been forced to live in embarrassingly small hovels. I was curious as to how Beth had met Thomas in the first place.

  Thomas pulled up to a ramshackle trailer whose idea of a yard was a pile of dirt and an overgrown, spindly bush.

  I parked my car and took stock of the town. From Beth’s trailer-yard I could not see any of the other homes. Paloverde trees, with their wild thin green branches, and dead scrub obscured everything.

  “Pretty rundown I know. She has to get by on her disability pay,” Tomas said. “I’d like her to move in with me, but she says it’s too soon.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “Internet!” Thomas grinned. “It’s the best way to date.”

  Funny, I thought it was the best place to find misinformation.


  “Ah,” I said.

  The screen door opened and onto what constituted a porch, a slim woman wrapped in white emerged. She had a thin face, blond frosty hair and her eyes were firmly shut. She had no cane, but her hand quested to find the frame of the door, fumbling slightly, giving further clue to her blindness.

  Thomas beamed. She was pretty, but such fleeting moments didn’t interest me.

  “Thomas, did you bring him?” she asked.

  “I’m here,” I replied.

  She turned her head to face me and it was as if she could somehow regard me through the lids of her eyes. “Thank you for coming. Please, step inside.”

  Thomas jerked his head. “Come on I—”

  “Thomas, would you mind waiting by the car. I need to speak to him alone.”

  His face fell and his eyes fixed on mine. I quickly pulled my coat tightly over myself. The heat was stifling, but it was necessary. “Don’t get mad at me,” I snapped.

  Thomas blinked. “Well, I’m not it’s just—”

  The screen door shut.

  “I won’t be long. Don’t worry.” I nodded to Thomas. “It’s a scholarly thing, that’s it.” Before he could protest, I jogged up to the door and pulled it aside. The scent of incense struck me, but also the telltale signs of a person steeped in ancient lore. I could smell the books. The very old ones had a particular odor and the tomes I was most fascinated with had a little tinge of decay to their smell, as if their covers were crafted from crumbling bones, and their pages from withered flesh.

  Inside the trailer were piles of papers, and somewhere under it I think I saw a table. A couch, half covered in books, was at one end of the trailer, a bed with rumpled sheets at the other. Incense smoldered from golden vessels placed haphazardly around the room. There was one other door, which I assumed led to a kitchen or bathroom.

  Beth slithered through the debris on the floor with easy steps, while her hand swayed in front of her in a practiced motion. She spoke as she made her way to the bed.

  “Thomas read me your notes. You know quite a bit.” She sat upon the bed and her fingers drummed upon the mattress. “Sit here.” Her pink lips formed a smile and her shut eyes squinted.

  I looked around for the source of the smell that had piqued my interest. Alas, I saw no bookshelf and none of the volumes on the couch were of interest to me. To Beth’s suggestion, I said, “Thomas might not like that.” Regardless of my own warning, I made my way over to her and sat down.

  Her hand reached out and searched for mine. “He’s very dutiful, but no expert.”

  She leaned in and I could smell perfume which blocked out the much more pleasant scent of forbidden knowledge. I stiffened.

  She took it the wrong way.

  Her hand slipped to rest on my leg. “You read that book and you can make much more sense of it than Thomas ever could, smitten as he is.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I think we could help each other.” Her hand glided up my leg, along my coat and then rested on my chin, gripping lightly with soft fingers. She turned my head to face her.

  My kind are paranoid for a reason. I saw Beth’s eyelids lift and I felt portions of myself shift under the coat. “Don’t,” I warned.

  She ignored me, perhaps used to weak-minded men like Thomas. Her eyelids fluttered open and I, in turn, leaned back and opened my coat. She showed me hers... I showed her mine. The moment was brief and she quickly realized that her studies had not equipped her to combat someone like myself.

  She screamed.

  I felt portions of my body extend. Slithering coils leapt towards her, fleshy hands sought to grasp, and several mouths (which I hadn’t noticed yesterday) yawned open and projected frog-like tongues that sizzled as they attached themselves to her face.

  Beth’s screams intensified until seething, roiling flesh flowing from my body engulfed her head. Tongues, tendrils and claws competed to wrap around the rest of her. I kept my coat open and watched casually as I began to devour her.

  The screen door slammed open and Thomas charged into the room. “Beth!” he exclaimed and whirled to face us.

  Just as I knew Thomas feared, his lover was in the embrace of another man. I gave him a small frown. I liked Thomas and truly wished his girlfriend had chosen her opponent more wisely. I could only shrug as the inhuman part of me tore through Beth’s body, swallowing one half, while the other fell back on the bed, smoking and popping from the unnatural enzymes and acids that had digested her.

  The scream that exited Thomas’s throat was in many ways more fearful, mortal, and miserable than Beth’s had been. He ran out of the trailer, wailing and wide-eyed. It was the last I saw, but not the last I heard, of Thomas Pembroke.

  ***

  My travels and studies had irrevocably linked me with the unknown alien entities from humanity’s earliest days. While modern men worshiped mystical, nonexistent ideal images of themselves, I chose the wiser course and gave my allegiance to much more real, but in no way ideal or benign, beings.

  So had Beth, but she had not been as dedicated a disciple as myself. A few hypnotic, squirming appendages in place of eyes did not make one a high priestess or herald of the End of Days. She was little more than a pseudo-witch, and was now very much dead.

  I searched her quarters, unwilling to kill without reward, and was pleasantly surprised to find what must have been her mother’s collection: two books in all. I would lovingly add these precious finds to my meager library in my quest to know all that men were not meant to.

  Or women, for that matter.

  As for poor Thomas Pembroke, I read about him in the newspaper a few days later. They called his ramblings mad, his use of needle and thread insane, but I knew better. His only mistake was that he should have used a spoon. It would have been quicker and ultimately less painful and more importantly, more permanent. I feel for Thomas, for as I seek to see, he will forever seek to forget; and just as I can’t unlearn, or unmake, a pact, Thomas can’t unsee a thing.

  About the author: Richard Marsden was born in Canada and is currently a resident of Arizona. He has been fencing with the rapier for fifteen years, dabbles in economics and holds a Master’s Degree in Land Warfare courtesy of AMU. His wife, AJ, lovingly encourages his eccentricities.

  Memories of Inhuman Nature

  Rick McQuiston

  The memories floated back into Jeff’s mind like colorful, detached leaves wafting down to a front lawn on a crisp autumn day. Each one displayed its own pain, which it seemed to dole out in completely sporadic intervals. All were difficult to bear, though in different ways, for different reasons, and yet in some strange way beyond his comprehension they were necessary: for closure; for understanding.

  He focused on his mother’s eyes in one. Those soft, warm, baby blue windows to her beautiful soul, which so many times in his life had reflected love and compassion. He could still see her as clearly as if she were standing right in front of him.

  It had been ten years since she passed away, a victim to a small, seemingly harmless lump in her breast. He had honestly thought she would beat it. She’d managed to pull through a serious car accident, a miscarriage, and the sudden deaths of both her parents, relatively unscathed.

  He smiled to himself, recalling when she had joked that life’s problems only served to strengthen her resolve. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, she would say, and Jeff tried hard to adhere to that philosophy as best he could throughout his life.

  Another memory was of lost love. Susie Peters was a very beautiful and petite girl who he’d known in high school. She never really cared that much for him though, outside of a few lackluster hellos and the occasional deigning to acknowledge his existence. He fondly remembered her strawberry blonde hair framing her milky white complexion and accenting her soft yet piercing eyes. How he had yearned to speak his true feelings into those eyes and caress her silky hair.

  But it was not meant to be—or so he reasoned with himself. He did realize he was in denial about
it, but what else could he do?

  More memories pushed their way to the surface. One after the other they stung his mind with varying degrees of pain and loneliness. The bleak outlook each brought with it etched away incessantly at his peace of mind, thinning the already delicate barrier between sanity and insanity.

  He leaned back in the seat and took several deep breaths. The soft hum of the Dodge’s motor gently vibrated the car, producing a hypnotic effect. His wristwatch yielded the time: three-fifteen in the afternoon.

  Outside, snow had begun to drift down like tiny flecks of white paint, silent and determined to coat the landscape in its beautiful but cold embrace. He was surprised it had not snowed earlier; it could not have been more than twenty degrees outside, with colder weather on the way. Perhaps the snow had just been lazy, he mused to himself, unaware of its duty once the temperature dipped below 32 degrees.

  He raised his worn navy blue coffee mug to his lips and took a deep swallow. It had grown stained through the years due to the endless cups of coffee it had held and had become a comfortable reminder of better days. He knew he drank too much caffeine, but to a certain extent he didn’t care. Life had not been kind to him, and he, in turn, felt like reciprocating. Why he harbored such irrational and downright absurd feelings he could not explain, not to anyone, and certainly not to himself.

  Was it because of everything he had endured in his life? Perhaps, but many others had endured much worse.

  Another memory drifted up to his consciousness. It demanded to be recognized due to its frightening proportions, and steadfastly refused to be understood or explained.

  Jeff let a wry smile escape. It was in stark contrast to the nature of the memory but he just couldn’t help himself. There shouldn’t be memories of things like this, he reasoned. There just shouldn’t. Imaginative thoughts from a horror or science fiction author perhaps, but not from a normal, hard-working, responsible man who had managed to face and overcome many unfortunate obstacles in his life.